Queensland Companies Partner to Tackle Coal Seam Gas Waste

The directors of CSG Enviro Services Pty Ltd (Australia) recently announced that the company has entered into a Technology Collaboration Agreement with Queensland-based bioengineering firm PolyGenomX Limited (“PGX”) in order to expand its capability in the long-term, sustainable management of saline water and brines for coal seam gas companies.

Dr Lee Fergusson, Chief Executive Officer of CSG Enviro Services, stated of the agreement, “we are particularly excited to be working with the management and scientists of PolyGenomX. PGX is an innovator in the management and disposal of salt-rich brines generated from coal seam gas and underground coal gasification extraction processes using bioengineered systems comprising ‘polygenomic’ plants and trees. These salt-consuming plants can be grown for biofuels and the trees can be grown for timber, without salt re-entering the environment.

“Along with the work we have started on phytoremediation with Dr Gary Bañuelos of the U.S. Department of Agriculture, we see the remarkable research and technology of PGX as being a perfect supplement to our already considerable knowledge base in salt water and brine management.”

PGX is an R&D, plant-based biotechnology company specialising in the area of epigenetics, specifically the directed application of polyploidy (non-GMO). Through the use of its unique PolyX technology, PGX enhances plants and trees to grow faster, to tolerate a wide range of environmental stress and to increase yields, for the forestry, agriculture, mining and farming industries.

Of particular relevance to CSG Enviro Services is the application of PGX’s bioremediation system, which utilises highly salt-tolerant bioengineered plants to treat CSG production water containing salt and salt brines produced by reverse osmosis and other salt-extraction processes.

Peter Rowe, Managing Director of PolyGenomX, explained that “polyploidy is the result of spontaneous gene duplication within plants; it is one of a suite of natural responses exhibited by plants as a reaction to environmental stress. Most common food crops, such as wheat and corn, have been progressively cross-bred from naturally-occurring polyploids to now have multiple copies of their original chromosome sets in each cell. They are ‘selectively-bred polyploids’.”

In relation to the CSG industry and the expertise of CSG Enviro Services to treat saline water and salt brines, of most importance is the finding that polyploids grow faster, tolerate environmental stress better and express a broader range of natural variations than do diploids. These variations can be adapted to outcomes that are desirable from a human perspective such as heightened tolerance to environmental stressors specifically the ability to clean and filter highly saline water.

Peter Rowe went on to explain that “‘polygenomics’ are deliberately-created, genotypically stable polyploid species. They are deliberately created using the proprietary PolyX process, and are fertile in that successive generations can be bred from them; and stable, in that those subsequent generations do not revert to a diploid state.”

Using PolyX technology, plants and trees can be adapted to almost any conditions over relatively short time periods. In nature, adaptation may take thousands or even millions of years, but with PolyX technology the plant’s in-built adaptive mechanisms are triggered to deliberately invoke specific characteristics from within a plant’s normal adaptive repertoire, so as to tailor it to a specific environment or outcome, such as those developed for CSG water and salt.

Dr Fergusson concluded that “as a result of our new relationship with PolyGenomX, we are now in a very strong position to offer a unique range of bioengineered services to the CSG industry for the long-term, sustainable management of CSG water and salt-rich brines. We look forward to implementing our first bioengineered brine management system in 2013.”